If we are still locked out on Friday, we have two major activities — another ‘Help Room’ starting at 10:30am and a Rally starting at 1pm.

The Help Room will be at the Ramada Inn Breakfast Room (55 Fairchild Dr., Mountain View) from 10:30am to 12:30pm. The Breakfast Room is a bit farther back in the parking lot than the room we were in on Thursday. For those members (in good standing for at least year) who request it and who appear in person, we will give a $100 dues refund. This is in addition to the $100 dues refund we gave on Thursday. We will give a maximum of $100 to each member this Friday, no matter whether they received last week’s refund or not.

Schedule for Friday the 18th:

10:30am AFEU Help Room/Rally HQ at the Ramada Mountain View Breakfast Room. We’ll be there to answer questions, to issue dues refunds, and to make signs for the rally. (We’ll have sign-making materials.)

12:30pm Walking protest procession from the Ramada Inn to the NASA Ames Main Gate.

1:00 pm RALLY at NASA Ames Research Center Main Gate.

We are still available to answer questions at shutdown@afeu.org. Sending us email lets us distribute our work between officers. If you’d like one of us to call you, please send your phone number and tell us good callback hours for you in your email. (It also helps if we have some clue about your question, so that we can put you in touch with the right expert.)

As a reminder, Menlo Survey is still offering emergency loans to their members. We also have a secured loan option for members who either cannot or choose not to take advantage of Menlo Survey’s unsecured loan option. (http://wordpress.afeu.org/?p=262658)

We are also hearing that analysts are using unemployment numbers to gauge the impact of the shutdown. Here are instructions for filing for unemployment: http://wordpress.afeu.org/?p=262656

We are hoping that we can have a ‘back to work’ celebration instead of these activities on Friday . . . . Right now the course of this is very hard to predict.